Michael Schumacher suffers broken leg after shock Ferrari failure – On This Day

It remains one of the most dramatic moments in Formula 1 history, and it happened exactly 27 years ago today.

On 11 July 1999, Michael Schumacher's Ferrari suffered a rear brake hydraulic failure as he approached Stowe corner at the end of Silverstone's Hangar Straight, one of the fastest sections on the calendar. 

With only his front brakes functioning, the wheels locked, and the car skated helplessly across the gravel trap before slamming into the tyre barrier and striking the wall at high speed.

The impact tore the front of the car apart, forcing a wheel into the cockpit and leaving Schumacher trapped with a double fracture to his lower right leg. He was extracted and taken for a 90-minute operation to insert a pin into the broken tibia.

What made the sequence of events even more extraordinary was the context. The race had already been red-flagged on the opening lap after Jacques Villeneuve and Alessandro Zanardi stalled on the grid. 

It was while the red flags were out that Schumacher's brakes failed, turning what should have been a routine slow-down lap into a season-defining disaster.

Title hopes destroyed

At that point in the season, Mika Hakkinen led the championship on 40 points, with Schumacher and his Ferrari teammate Eddie Irvine locked together on 32. 

Schumacher was widely considered the Scuderia's best weapon in a quest for a first drivers' title since Jody Scheckter in 1979, and in an instant, that weapon was gone.

The race restarted without him. David Coulthard won for McLaren, Irvine finished second, and from that moment Ferrari's entire championship strategy was rebuilt around the Northern Irishman.

Schumacher missed six races before returning at the inaugural Malaysian Grand Prix in October, where he immediately took pole position and then moved aside to hand Irvine the victory, boosting his teammate's title hopes. 

It was not enough. Hakkinen held on to claim his second consecutive drivers' championship, though Ferrari did secure the constructors' crown, its first since 1983.

Schumacher's time would come. But that sweltering afternoon at Silverstone, 27 years ago today, it was brutally snatched away.